The present disclosure relates to the design of integrated circuits, and more specifically, to methods and computer program products for facilitating the design of integrated circuits using thermally aware pin assignment and device placement.
When an integrated circuit, or chip, is operating, the temperature can vary throughout the chip due to the power consumption and dissipation in the CMOS-transistors. In general, the power consumption is caused by transistor switching, short-circuit and leakage power consumption. The average switching power dissipation is due to the required energy to charge up the parasitic and load capacitances of a transistor. In most cases, the largest contribution to the power consumption is the transistor switching. The dissipated power will increase the temperature of the surrounding area of the integrated circuit. Temperature variation in a chip affects the performance of the integrated circuit. In general, the propagation delay across the chip increases with increased temperature.
In current integrated circuit designs, hot-spots in the integrated circuit are often formed because of a clustering of high-activity interconnects (and connected devices) in certain areas of a chip. As a result of this hot-spot formation, non-desired impacts will be seen on chip operation. There will be reliability concerns in the hot-spots as well as additional leakage power dissipation (leakage power approximately doubles with every 10 degree Celsius rise in temperature).